Asheville Fringe Arts Festival: Basket Case — The Musical

The 2021 Asheville Fringe Arts Festival has gone virtual. The shows, traditionally a melange of the avant-garde, the sublime, the absurd, and the completely incomprehensible, are now mediated through our home screens.

It is within this digital framework that I viewed Basket Case: The Musical, an ironic, self-aware parody of the 1982 B-movie Basket Case, in which a man’s deformed, previously conjoined twin terrorizes him as he searches for a new life.

As the name suggests, this one’s got songs! Some of them aren’t half-bad either, especially the ballad “I Hate To Love You,” which may even jerk some tears from the emotionally invested viewer.

I found the show to be too long by half, but, in all fairness, I think most shows are too long. Still, I was surprised at how charmed I ended up being by this bizarre little show, which has definite echoes of beloved postmodern goofs like Reefer Madness, Zombie Prom, and Bat Boy: The Musical.

Anchoring the cast is Duane (Jared Blount, who also directs), a young man recently separated from his “brother” — a blob of tissue with whom he was joined at the hip (quite literally). While staying in a seedy hotel owned by the wonderfully greasy Tony (Jon Haque), Duane falls in love with a hussy named Sharon (Kara Luther-Chapman) who teaches him about sex, tequila, and dreaming big dreams. 

The Creature (Jordan Blount) doesn’t care one bit that his handsome older brother is getting attention from Sharon. He attacks her and kills Tony. By the time Sharon comes back with the police, Duane, too, has succumbed to his brother’s murderous rage. 

Basket Case: The Musical may need to be sanded down or shortened, or perhaps it simply works better onstage than a YouTube livestream format. But either way, the core of this show represents the best of Fringe: creative, engaging, weird, and more than a little grotesque.

The 2021 Asheville Fringe Arts Festival runs through Sunday, January 24. For a complete listing of shows, visit ashevillefringe.org

(Photo courtesy of Asheville Fringe)